Inside Unmanned Systems

APR-MAY 2018

Inside Unmanned Systems provides actionable business intelligence to decision-makers and influencers operating within the global UAS community. Features include analysis of key technologies, policy/regulatory developments and new product design.

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22 April/May 2018 unmanned systems
inside
SPECIAL REPORT NASA TECHNOLOGY
NASA-designed
amorphous robots that
could traverse diffi cult
surfaces and search
collapsed buildings.
Photos courtesy of NASA.
Though humans can't hear such low frequen-
cies that animals can, which help explains why
animals often seem forewarned of natural
disasters.
"In Java in 2011 a tsunami came but there
were very, very few animals killed and the
reason for that—these elephants and other
animals—they sensed these signals before the
earthquake, before the tsunami hit," Shams
said. "And those elephants and those animals
started running toward the mountain area
and climbed it and this saved their lives and
even some people who followed them."
Infrasound has additional potential as a
tool to help reduce industrial noise. One firm
has already licensed the technology in hopes
of pinpointing and reducing the sound from
wind turbines, thereby reducing resistance to
fice of the appropriate NASA center with any
questions. Jennifer Viudez, a Langley technol-
ogy transfer specialist, suggests both calling
and emailing using the contact details given
online. A technology portfolio or licensing spe-
cialist can get you more information and, once
you feel confident enough to proceed, you can
submit a license application online.
There are three types of licenses, Viudez said,
including special options for small companies.
The license familiar to most people, she said,
is the standard commercial license, which re-
quires the company to submit a business plan.
The tech transfer office weighs the business
plan and looks at factors, like whether the tech-
nology is already licensed, to decide whether
to go forward with the application and, if so,
for what kind of royalty. The royalties and the
terms of license are the product of negotiations.
"Each one of those are customized," Viudez
said. "They're definitely not cookie cutter. We
negotiate back and forth with the licensee—a
lot of communication between my office and
the potential licensee to come up with the fi-
nancial terms of the license."
If the technology is promising but it's not yet
clear if it's suitable, a company can request an
evaluation license. For a flat fee of $2,500, the
firm gets the same access to the intellectual
property as a holder of a commercial license but
for only roughly one year. Evaluation licenses are
also non-exclusive, Viudez said, and are "only
awarded to U.S. companies, where commercial
licenses could potentially be international."
STARTUP SUPPORT
NASA introduced a third option about two
years ago—a startup license geared specifically
to small firms.
"The company needs to have been in busi-
ness for less than a year," Viudez said, and have
less than 50 employees and less than $2 mil-
lion dollars in the bank.
"The good thing about the startup license is
you don't have to pay NASA an upfront fee, you
the installation of wind farms.
"We want to measure the exact location from
where these signals are coming from and at what
frequencies those signals are coming from,"
Shams said. Once the source is identified, there
might be ways to reduce it or cancel it out.
LET'S MAKE A DEAL
Firms interested in tapping NASA's technology
catalog have several ways to search for patents.
Langley and each of the NASA centers has a
technology transfer web page with a search op-
tion. The agency as a whole has its own search
page, which should include the centers' patents
and more from other NASA facilities. You can
scroll through categories of technology or do
key-word searches.
The first step after finding an interesting
technology is to contact the tech transfer of-
SO IT KEEPS ALL THE MONEY IN THE STARTUP'S POCKET
FOR THEM TO GET GOING FOR AT LEAST THE FIRST THREE
YEARS—AND THAT TENDS TO BE VERY ATTRACTIVE."
Jennifer Viudez, technology transfer specialist, NASA Langley
"